Teaching Children with Intellectual Disabilities: Analysis ...

Journal of Education and Learning; Vol. 5, No. 2; 2016

E-ISSN 1927-5269

ISSN 1927-5250

Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education

Teaching Children with Intellectual Disabilities: Analysis of

Research-Based Recommendations

Lauri M.O. R?ty1, Elina K. Kontu2 & Raija A. Pirttimaa1

1

Department of Education, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, Finland

2

Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Correspondence: Lauri M.O. R?ty, University of Jyvaskyla, Department of Education, Jyvaskyla, Finland. Tel:

358-40-527-6994. E-mail: lauri.raty@jyu.fi

Received: February 18, 2016

doi:10.5539/jel.v5n2p318

Accepted: March 18, 2016

Online Published: April 19, 2016

URL:

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative study was to produce an overview of topics and practical recommendations that

have been presented for teaching for students with intellectual disabilities in educational research articles

published from 2000 to 2013. The sample of peer-reviewed research articles considering this topic was selected

using a database search of the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). To represent the richness of

this research area, the topic was purposely left broad, and the outline was made by focusing on the practical

implications of research articles. These recommendations were identified, classified, synthesized, and evaluated.

The implications for practice and research are presented based on the findings of this study.

Keywords: intellectual disability, education, teaching, school practices

1. Introduction

The conversation about why inclusion is important and should be reinforced is very familiar to all researchers

and practitioners in education. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989) and the

Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994) have guided politicians and schools to seek and create solutions for

organizing schools and education for all (McGuire et al., 2006). In addition, many studies have claimed that

inclusive schooling produces good learning outcomes (e.g., Hattie, 2009; Kvalsund & Bele, 2010). Several other

studies have supported policies for inclusive education (Allan, 2005; Lindsay, 2007). The positive attitudes of

teachers and principals are beneficial for building inclusive schools (Jordan et al., 2009; Saloviita, 2009). Other

arguments claim that teaching exceptional children does not demand special skills, only general teaching abilities

and sensitivity to all children (Woolfolk, 2009). Jordan et al. (2009) argued that effective teaching is valid for the

majority of students with special needs. Mortier et al. (2010) suggested being critical about transferring special

education knowledge to the general education system and instead considering the possibilities of partnership and

local knowledge.

However, there is a contradiction between the views of scholars and practitioners in the field. Despite

researchers¡¯ arguments, teachers have stated that they do not feel confident offering fully inclusive classrooms if

they lack specialized skills and knowledge (Florian & Linklater, 2010; Kamens et al., 2003; Mortier et al., 2010),

and they feel anxious when teaching diverse students (Avramidis & Norwich, 2002; Blecker & Boakes, 2010).

There are no accurate statistics of inclusive education, but it seems that full inclusion of students with intellectual

disabilities is not common in countries that do not legally prescribe inclusion as the only option (Anderson et al.,

2011; U.S. Department of Education, 2013; Kokko et al., 2014). Globally valued definition for intellectual

disability is launched by American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (2015). It states

that ¡°intellectual disability is a disability characterized by significant limitations in both intellectual functioning

and in adaptive behavior, which covers many everyday social and practical skills. This disability originates

before the age of 18¡±.

It is argued that the most reliable knowledge can be found in peer-reviewed research articles. If we try to see this

from the point of view of the average teacher, we may find ourselves buried in an insurmountable swamp.

Teachers don¡¯t feel that research articles are advantageous (Shkedi, 1998; Williams & Coles, 2003); we can only

guess at the reason for this opinion, but perhaps articles are difficult to access or written using language that is

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too cumbersome. Furthermore, teachers¡¯ everyday workload, including dealing with children and parents, may

hinder them in the important task of reading research articles. Instead of using this study to debate the existence

of ¡°special educational knowledge¡±, we want to uncover the kinds of recommendation that have been given for

teaching in the latest research. The topic of teaching children with intellectual disabilities is too broad for a fully

rigorous analysis. We can¡¯t find, analyse, and summarize all content of this research area because it would be

inconceivably laborious. However, as commonly performed in quantitative research, we can take a

representative sample of the population and use that sample for our research data.

The purpose of this study was to produce an overview of the research concerning teaching students with

intellectual disabilities. Instead of focusing on why inclusion is important, this study explored how inclusion can

be implemented, which is also convenient with the revolution in understanding intellectual disability, because

the focus has shifted from assessing individuals¡¯ deficits to identifying helpful support (Buntinx & Schalock,

2010). Research on how these students can be better supported in practice is needed based on the emerging

support paradigm and the finding that students with intellectual disabilities are not included in general education

classrooms as often as students with other disabilities (Ferguson, 2008).

The research questions of this study were:

1) What topics are covered in intellectual disability-related educational research?

2) What kinds of recommendations are given in existing intellectual disability-related educational studies?

This study can be seen as one response to the challenge of developing effective ideas for using research in

practice, which the president of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and

Developmental Disabilities, Vianne Timmons (2013), has presented.

2. Methods

The method of this qualitative study is original. The sample of research articles was sought, and practical

implications were identified, analysed, and synthesized. In the chapters 2.1-2.8., the study procedure, selection of

the articles, identification of practical implications, and the method of analysis are expanded upon. The validity

of the study method is assessed as well.

2.1 Procedure

The study process is presented in Figure 1. First, the sample data was collected by retrieving all articles that were

classified as dealing with intellectual disabilities in an educational research database (ERIC). These 333 research

articles were compared twice against established selection criteria to ensure that they truly addressed teaching

students with intellectual disabilities. After the abstract and full text phase screening, 87 articles were included in

the sample.

Under the established norms of scientific journals, researchers are advised to discuss the practical significance of

their findings (American Psychological Association, 2010, p. 36) and give recommendations, suggestions, and

implications for practice. Because of the large sample and the background of the study, the analysis focused on

these practical implications, which were identified with the help of established guidelines. Relevant information

from the selected studies was recorded in a computer program. Studies were classified based on similarities, and

a synthesis of the findings based on categories was written. In the following sections, the search strategy,

selection criteria, guidelines for identifying implications for practice, and an analysis of the data are expounded.

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Figure 1. An overview of the study process, selection criteria, data classification, and the number of included

articles

2.2 The Sample Selection Process

Similar to limitations often found in other studies focused on the social sciences (Gobo, 2004), it would be an

impossible mission to draw a purely random sample of intellectual disability-related studies, because no one can

occupy the totality of research and the topic cannot be defined on absolute merit. The purpose of the study was to

provide a broad overview of this research area, therefore the heterogeneity of selected studies was essential. It is

impossible to generate a overview of every relevant research article in the world, so a realistic sampling

procedure is necessary. Thus, we conducted a search in one database to obtain a sufficient sample of articles.

Then, to control suitability, criterion-based selection (Patton, 2002) was conducted. To make most of the

richness of this research area, the selection criteria included the possibility of making interpretations as usual in

qualitative inquiries.

2.3 Search Strategy

Professionals in local scientific library information services were personally consulted before the search strategy

was established. A database search was conducted to identify studies that covered teaching and children with

intellectual disabilities in an electronic database: the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC). This

database was chosen because it is the largest education database in the world and is focused on education-related

topics (Proquest, 2014).

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The search was simple. An outmoded term (¡°mental retardation¡±) that is still used in the thesaurus was included

as well as the term ¡°intellectual disabilit*¡±. The search was restricted to peer-reviewed articles published

between 2000 and 2013. Results were also narrowed in ERIC within educational level; elementary education,

primary education, middle schools, intermediate grades, secondary education, elementary secondary education,

junior high schools, high schools, and grades 1-12 were included. This phase produced 333 citations.

It is impossible to find all relevant articles on the topic using this method. Journals that are not included in ERIC

cannot be found via a search of the database. However, we can argue that because ERIC contains 93 of the top

100 educational journals (Thomson Reuters, 2014), and the seven that are not included are not related to the

topic, the sample is representative of well-made educational research. Additionally, if a study is not correctly

classified under the thesaurus, it cannot be found using this method. However, the kind of systematic error that

would lead to the correct classification of some articles and the incorrect classification of others is considered

highly unlikely. Therefore, it may be thought that there is some kind of contingency if an article appeared in

search results, thus the sample can be considered well-drawn and representative.

2.4 The Selection Criteria

The selection criteria are presented in Figure 1, but can be further elaborated. The first criterion was that the

study must be an available peer-reviewed empirical research article. Therefore theoretical discussions, and grey

literature were excluded. Systematic reviews were not included, because the analysis would been too

complicated (some studies would have been included in our study twice).

The second criterion was that the focus must be school-aged students with intellectual disabilities. Because of the

diversity of the studies, exact criteria were not appropriate. Therefore, the following guidelines were used:

studies were excluded if greater than 50% of the participants had other disabilities or intellectual disability and

comorbid autism. In addition, comparative articles were excluded in which the focus was comparing the

performance of two groups of students with different disabilities. Articles that focused on intellectual disabilities

could not contain any subjects with intellectual disabilities, for example, when assessing teachers¡¯ attitudes

toward inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities.

The third criterion was that the article must have a pedagogical focus, which is defined as related to teaching or

learning in a school environment. Therefore, medical, technical, and leisure-time-related studies were excluded.

The fourth criterion was that the study must provide generally recoverable recommendations. Therefore, studies

that examined students with very rare disabilities or a specific issue of a particular country¡¯s school system and

results that could not be generalized were rejected. Thus, studies that did not offer practical recommendations

(e.g., surveys, brief reports), as described in the following section 2.5., were excluded.

In the full-text screening phase, 42 articles were excluded based on the first criterion, 28 based on the second

criterion, 28 based on the third criterion, and 8 based on the fourth criterion. Some articles were excluded based

on more than one criterion, but only the most explicit was recorded.

2.5 Guidelines for Identifying Practical Recommendations

The critical issue of this procedure was how recommendations were identified. It was initially assumed that

researchers would provide clear recommendations or implications for practice, but this was often not the case.

Most authors commented, at least on some level, on the practical relevance of the study findings. Because texts

were diverse, the following guidelines were used to confirm the validity of interpretations: (a) Recommendations

were for teacher or school activities, or could be easily applied for that purpose (i.e., development of reading). If

clear recommendations, proposals, or implications were not offered, they were explicated from the conclusion

(e.g., ¡°the intervention was effective and convenient¡±). (b) The recommendations were the authors¡¯ own words

(not cited) and based on their results.

2.6 Analysis

The full texts of 193 papers were analysed more precisely against criteria. The data was encoded in Microsoft

Excel 2010 to allow a filtration process. The encoding comprised the reference, name of article, subject, target

group, age group, level of intellectual disability, research type, and recommendation for practice.

The data was classified based on study similarities. The classification was cyclical process that demanded

continuous evaluation. Seven subject-based categories were composed. Papers that did not fit in any

subject-based category were classified in the category that included instruction planning support assessment

methods, overall suggestions for school work, and instructional methods. These eight categories formed the basis

of data synthesis. The categories and classification of articles are presented in Figure 1.

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2.7 The Validity of Method

If the reader is familiar with the method of systematic reviews (e.g., Torgerson, 2003), he or she may recognize a

consistency of methods between this study and systematic reviews. However, it is not appropriate to evaluate the

validity of this study against the principles of systematic reviews. Validity in this study refers to the

trustworthiness, as well as rigorous and transparent decisions and procedure during the research process.

Contrary to systematic reviews, the goal of this study was not to find and synthesize all research evidence of a

particular narrow topic, thus the search process was kept simple and the selection criteria were somewhat open

and broad as described earlier. To both achieve our purpose and keep the amount of work conceivable, the study

was not designed to rigorously evaluate the methodological strengths and weaknesses of reviewed studies, but

rather to synthesize implications for practice derived from research results. The basis of the validity of this study

was that researchers are experts on the strengths and limitations of their own work and are able to interpret

appropriate implications. The data used in this study was also peer reviewed, and is therefore dependable.

The representativeness of our sample is discussed above, and the search process can be considered valid. It is

reasonable to suppose that if an article is primarily focused on intellectual disabilities, it is classified under

intellectual disability in the thesaurus. The ERIC database contains the majority of top education journals;

therefore, our search adequately represents well-made educational research. It seems that there is a contingency

if an article appeared in our search results, but readers should take these issues into consideration when

generalizing our findings and also notice that there are always critical issues in sampling methods in social

sciences (e.g., Gobo, 2004).

The effects of the aforementioned issues on the validity of the study are outlined in the discussion section.

However, despite these weaknesses, this unique study has many strengths. We consider any systematic errors in

the sampling procedure highly unlikely. The sample size is large, and the search and selection procedures have

been evaluated by local information specialists, other authors and other experts of the field. Meticulousness has

been one of the key principles in the procedure of the data handling process; authors have used computer-based

data management programs and evaluated the meticulous of their actions constantly. The identification of

practical implications and all citations have been systematically checked several times. Also the rejections of

articles of the selection have been double-checked. Clear cases were handled by the first author, but in unclear

cases the expertise of whole working group was used. Finally, in addition to all previously mentioned revisions,

inter-rater evaluation of classification and identification of practical implications for 20% of selected studies was

conducted and 100% agreement was found. The sample contains methodologically heterogeneous studies, but

rather than methods, we have focused on implications that can be drawn from these studies. We cannot claim

that our sample was the full picture of intellectual disability-related educational research, but we can assert that it

was a good overview of covered topics and implications given by intellectual disability-related educational

research.

2.8 Description of the Sample

Of the selected 87 papers, 36.8% included children who were under 13 years old, 42.5% included adolescents

over 13 years old, and 16.1% included both children and adolescents. In 4.6% of the studies, the age group was

undefined. The studies considered, among other topics, teacher attitudes toward students with intellectual

disabilities. Among the chosen studies, 62.1% considered students with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities,

12.6% included participants with severe to profound intellectual disabilities, and 25.3% of the studies did not

define the type or severity of the participant¡¯s intellectual disabilities. The sample offered a good representation

of the general population, as all age groups and levels of intellectual disability were involved and studies

examining participants with severe to profound intellectual disabilities are within the statistical minority.

3. Findings

Findings, as a synthesis of the recommendations, are presented within the categories introduced in Figure 1. If

the participants of the study were under 13 years old, the word ¡°children¡± was used; if the participants were over

13 years old, the word ¡°adolescents¡± was used. When the age of the participants was undefined or children and

adolescents were included, the word ¡°students¡± was used. Studies that examined students with severe to

profound intellectual disability were highlighted.

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